Mount&Blade - Review @ GameBanshee

GameBanshee sports the latest Mount & Bladereview, with Thomas 'Brother None' Beekers loving the combat (as you'd expect) but finding it a poor RPG. The score is 7.4/10 and here's a grab:

The quests aren't much for adding more substance, either. Guild masters have boring quests like escorting caravans or herding cattle while village elders are even worse, sending you to find and fetch cattle or food. Lords are just as bad at the start, trusting you only to deliver letters or go out to claim debts. A lot of fetch and deliver quests, in other words.

It gets better later on, though not by much. The problem is that interesting ideas never have interesting execution. Sent out to pay the ransom for a kidnapped girl? No intrigue here, just hand over the money and you get her - the only trouble is of the type you can start. Have to track down a killer amongst his kinfolk? Just look for the guy with a sword. Need to follow a spy and capture him and the person he's reporting to? Just follow their tracks, equip blunt weapons, charge in and knock them over the heads to knock them out and take them back. You should be seeing the pattern here: it's almost exclusively fight or fetch, and since there's only about 2 dozen quests you'll start running into the same one over and over soon enough.